Bridgeport

A New Home

There are so many new features for The Sims 3 Late Night that existing neighborhoods have a lot of work to do. Like all expansions that feature new types of neighborhoods, you'll see a special pop-up box the first time you load up an old neighborhood. The pop-up will prompt you on the new lot types (such as nightclubs in this case) and will invite you to place some EA-made ones around the town to take advantage of the new features.

If you don't want to deal with that and don't mind starting from scratch, you can create a new game and select the new city of Bridgeport as your Sim's home! Unlike the foreign areas from World Adventures, Bridgeport is a neighborhood itself and will not attach to your existing save files. If you can't part with your Sims but want to move, consider creating copies of them to the Sim household library, then starting a new save file and moving them in that way.

For now, we'll be exploring Bridgeport with a new couple. From the last section of the wiki, you may remember that we left sisters Valerie and Destiny Carwin with their careers. This time, we'll visit their cousins in Bridgeport! Ladies and gentlmen, meet Saint and Nikita Carwin!

Apartments

One of the newest features of Late Night is the ability to create elevators. In an effort to show off that feature, in addition to the grander scale of Bridgeport over conventional neighborhoods, you'll notice that much of Bridgeport is full of skyscrapers! Much of it is livable rather than being strictly for business, so the Carwins decide to move into an apartment for now.

Moving into an apartment is no different than moving into a conventional house. Unlike The Sims 2: Apartment Life, apparents in The Sims 3 are not their own complex system. There are AI-controlled Sims who live in other apartments within the same skyscraper, but your Sims can't live there; your Sims can only live in one specific apartment in any given skyscraper. Adding a second family to a skyscraper will make them occupy the same apartment as the original family.

This sounds like a lot of downsides, and it is a lot less convenient being in an apartment than a home of your own. However, being in a downtown apartment will put you much closer to the action, which is a pretty good idea if you're aiming to try out the new careers or go bar hopping. Saint wants to be an actor, so being in the thick of the city is a good idea.

The Carwins have a little trouble finding a place. Most apartments are occupied, and a couple out of their price range. Despite the appearance of size on the map view, only one family is allowed to live in any given skyscraper; again, the apartments are treated just like any other house despite their outside appearance. Still, they find a little place on the far north end of the island right next to a construction zone. Not the best circumstances, but it'll do for now since they're just starting out.

Once you're inside the apartment, you'll see why the skyscrapers are actually a bit of an illusion. As Saint uses the elevator with a "Go To Floor" command, he sees that he two options: the ground floor (where he is now) and the 18th (their apartment). It's strange for the building to be so empty, especially because it takes a while for the other units on their floor to fill up with Sims.

However, the main advantage of getting an apartment is the incredibly cheap cost. The building already has all the walls and flooring it needs, plus some basic furnishings. It costs under $4000 for the Carwins to move in, giving them over $12,000 for any necessities. Building or buying a conventional house forces you to spend on the architecture, forcing your Sims to use low-level objects for a while. By renting out an apartment, you'll be able to spend more on upper-level objects early, which saves you money in the long-term and gives your Sims a bit of an advantage to offset generation-1 Sims' low skill levels. After all, it's slower to make progress in career track ladders when your Sim has a "Bad Night's Sleep" or "Tastes Like Fridge" debuff!

Making Movies

The Carwins move in, sell almost all of the furnishings (which amazingly makes them nearly break even), and quickly get the placed organized. Nikita has the Natural Cook trait, so she gets to work checking out the Cooking Level 1 book from her bookshelf, while Saint looks for jobs in the paper. In other words, typical opening moves for any Generation-1 Sim family. The only unusual action is that the newspaper is delivered outside the skyscraper, so Saint has to take the elevator back to the ground to get it.

Saint really wants to get into the new Film career track; it's his dream to be a superstar actor. However, the newspaper isn't offering it for today. No worries: Saint heads out of the building and drives across town to the new movie lot, a new lot type. He signs up without any problems and will start tomorrow.

The film career track is a conventional job; that is, you can't interact it with it other than with job strategies. The first couple levels are only dependent on the Sim's mood, but the Charisma skill plays a fairly important for later levels. Saint buys a Charisma book while out of town, then has a good night's sleep.